NEW DELHI, July 28: Government will set up ten regional laboratories through the National Communicable Disease Centre (NCDC) for the surveillance of viral hepatitis, which kills more people than HIV/AIDS, malaria and dengue combined together in India.
“The aim of these laboratories will be to find the burden of viral hepatitis in India by 2017 and to provide lab support for investigating outbreaks,” Lov Verma, Secretary of Union Health Ministry said today at a roundtable consultation organised by Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in collaboration with WHO Country Office for India on the occasion of World Hepatitis Day.
He also stressed on focusing on the preventive aspects rather than treatment of viral Hepatitis given the limited health resources in India.
Mass awareness, education and setting up universal guidelines for immunization are needed to fight the disease which kills three lakh people across the country every year.
Standardisation of blood bank practices and introduction of nucleic acid testing (NAT) is important for preventing blood transfusions related to viral hepatitis, Verma said.
There are five main hepatitis viruses, types A, B, C, D and E of which B and C is most fatal as it can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer. Hepatitis B and C are both blood borne and can be transmitted from man to man.
“Hepatitis B is responsible for 1.4 million deaths every year (compared to 1.5 million deaths from HIV/AIDS and 1.2 million from each of malaria and TB),” said Shiv Sarin, Director of ILBS as he called for collective efforts in reducing the burden of the disease.
“India has over 40 million hepatitis B infected patients (second only to China) and constitutes about 15 per cent of the entire pool of hepatitis B in the world. Tribal areas in India have high prevalence of hepatitis B. Every year, nearly 600,000 patients die from HBV infection in the Indian continent. Outbreaks of acute and fulminant hepatitis B still occur mainly due to inadequately sterilized needles and syringes,” explained Sarin.
Dr Sarin said increasing public awareness about the disease and its symptoms and regular health check-up for people above 40 years of age is needed to check the incidence. “ILBS is committed towards making India Hepatitis Free by 2080,” he said.
He also stressed on improving the access to treatment and availability as well as affordability of the drugs of Hepatitis B and C.
Drugs for treating the disease are quite expensive and cannot be prescribed to pregnant women, children or people with heart or kidney ailments.
“The government should make these drugs free of cost, or at least, heavily subsidised, like they have done in cases of tuberculosis and HIV. If you look into the economic conditions, more than half of the Indian population can’t afford that,” said Dr Sarin.
Dr Nicole Seguy (WHO Country Office, India) discussed the World health assembly resolution for controlling viral hepatitis along with global and regional hepatitis framework for action including the four axis.
The conference identified the following priority areas — need to generate data on the magnitude of the burden of Viral Hepatitis in India, identifying high risk and priority population, improving coverage birth dose vaccination as well as all dose coverage of HBV vaccine, improving injection safety and spread knowledge of safe injection among health care workers and screening of high risk groups.
Improving the access to treatment and availability as well as affordability of the drugs for HBV and HCV 7 along with improving sanitation and safe drinking water for prevention of HAV and HEV were also discussed. (PTI)
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